Biography

As a child, Nina (Pavlovna) Koshetz benefited from the musical influence her tenor father had on her and from her early piano studies, which she began at the age of four. By nine, she gave her first recital and two years later, she was at the Moscow Conservatory continuing her instrumental training with Constantine Nicolaievitch Igumnoff and Vassily Ilyitch Safonoff and her vocal training with Enzo Masetti; she was also a singing student of FéliaRead more Litvinne and Sergey Taneyev. After touring with Rachmaninov and performing with Koussevitzky and his orchestra, she made her operatic debut as Tatyana in Yevgeny Onegin at the Imperial Opera in St. Petersburg with the Zimin's Private Opera Company in 1913. She also toured with the Ukrainian National Chorus, which was conducted by her brother, and sang with the Chicago Opera Association, the Russian Opera Company, and at the Paris Opera. Other notable musicians she appeared with include Blumenfeld, Gretchaninov, Glazunov, Medtner, Joaquin Nin, Prokofiev, Tcherepnin, and Yavarsky. After spending considerable time in France, she again toured parts of Europe and the U.S., devoted herself to teaching, and spent the last 25 years of her life in California, occasionally performing in films. Her distinctive voice can be heard on only a few recordings, one of which is Memoir Classics' Great Voices in Tchaikovsky. Read less